STORRS -- It was 1980, and a recently divorced Dorothy Ollie had just relocated her family from Dallas to Los Angeles.

Six miles south of her new home, there was a church, New Birth Missionary Baptist, run by her brother, Rev. E.V. Jernigan. Here, at this two-story Stucco building in L.A., her children -- Vita, Rhonda Renee and "her baby," Kevin -- spent their childhood. It was here in 1981 that Kevin Ollie first heard Dorothy, her voice so powerful and mesmerizing, teach the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

"I fell in love (with church) when I was able to hear her preach," Kevin says. "She did it with such passion and was always able to help people, so I think I tried to take on that personality, too."

Now the men's basketball coach at UConn, Kevin Ollie was around 8 years old when he became immersed in life at New Birth Missionary: He and younger cousin Tinez Jernigan participated in a gospel singing trio that toured churches in California, and Ollie was later appointed to lead a bible study group, where he'd facilitate discussion through his high school years.

"People listened to him because he spoke reality," Tinez says. "People always looked up to him."

He spoke not only of the Bible, but of life's purpose, instituting the concept of "coming in to worship and going out to serve in the community," a notion that still stands at Jernigan's church. Thirty years later, Jernigan feels Ollie's wide-reaching impact: A woman living 200 miles from the church and a man in Iraq, both formerly of the church, recently mentioned Ollie as someone who positively influenced their lives.

For Ollie, the ability to speak always came naturally. So did basketball, the game that eventually led him out of Los Angeles.

As his professional career took off, visits to New Birth Missionary became sporadic. Ollie was all over the country -- he called 11 different NBA cities home -- and Dorothy had moved back to Texas with her daughters. It was in 2009, with his NBA days winding down, that he returned to the church to deliver a Sunday morning speech. Its focus: sacrifice, goals and the importance of family.

"You need to bring your family along with you," Ollie says. "What sense does it make to get accomplishments if you can't share them with anybody?"

`More than basketball'

Kevin Ollie's elbows rested on his knees, his eyes locked on the high school game he observed from the third row of bleachers. This gymnasium, dark and dusty, wasn't all that different than the venues he sat in for the past two years as an assistant coach on the recruiting trail.

Only this game, played at Manchester High last January, didn't feature any recruits. It featured Ollie's son, Jalen, then a sophomore guard at Glastonbury High.

In his brief tenure as an assistant at UConn, Ollie sometimes asked to be excused early from coaches' meetings so he could make it to Jalen's basketball game or his daughter Cheyenne's soccer match. Head coach Jim Calhoun used to tell him "no problem."

"I think that's important," Calhoun says.

That's why this story was no surprise to Calhoun: UConn Athletic Director Warde Manuel, the man who granted Ollie a one-year deal (renewable at season's end), invited the new coach to his press box for a September football game against Buffalo. Ollie politely declined, instead opting to watch Jalen throw for 116 yards and a touchdown as Glastonbury routed Conard, of West Hartford.

"That's a great political place to be with a guy who is going to have a lot to say about (Ollie's) future," Calhoun says. "But he wanted to see his son play. That's not a decision everyone would make."

Ollie, who married his college sweetheart, Stephanie, in September 1998, kept his family in Glastonbury -- at one point living five houses down from Calhoun's son, Jeff -- during a nomadic NBA career. During the season, he'd see his children at the All-Star break, for three days. The telephone became a valuable tool -- with his kids, his wife and his friends.

Jeff Calhoun, who played at UConn from 1991-96, has known Ollie for 20 years. They're like brothers, Jeff says. Same goes for Danny Griffin, a high school teammate who played at UNLV and Rhode Island. Independently, Calhoun and Griffin use the word "authentic" to describe Ollie. They truly believe he's capable of anything.

"I think if Kevin was in politics, he would do well," Griffin says. "If Kevin was in the ministry, he'd do well. If Kevin was a public speaker, he would do well. Kevin Ollie is more than basketball."

When he was young, Kevin Ollie was football. At 3 years old, he could sit still and focus for an entire Dallas Cowboys game. Even at that age, the concept of winning and losing was abundantly clear; Dorothy says he'd cry uncontrollably whenever his beloved Cowboys were defeated. In Los Angeles, he played football in the street with Tinez, talking about how one day he'd make the Cowboys (Interestingly, his first NBA stop was the Dallas Mavericks).

It wasn't until middle school when Ollie began to draw basketball hoops on the wall in his room --"my mom would go ballistic," Vita Ollie says -- and shoot rolled-up socks into the outline. He told Dorothy, "Mommy, basketball is in my blood," and Vita soon brought him down to the park, where he stuck with guys three times his age.

"He was holding his own and I was like `Oh my God,' " Vita says. "A friend of mine had a team down there at the park, so we got him on the team and it kind of blossomed after that."

Shortly thereafter, he made the Crenshaw varsity team as a sophomore, almost unheard of at the national powerhouse.

Ollie came off the bench that year and helped propel the Cougars to a state championship win over rival Westchester, chasing down a fast break and swatting a layup late in the game. In the words of legendary Crenshaw coach Willie West, "Every team needs that guy who won't let you lose."

Starring at Crenshaw, a school known for producing Division I talent, was a big deal. Players were known by the Lakers and Clippers, Griffin says, and were given "a pass" from the five or six gangs that patrolled the area.

During Ollie's high school years, gang violence near Crenshaw, just a few miles away from "The Jungle," the neighborhood depicted in the 2001 film "Training Day," was at an all-time high. Crime was so widespread at sunset that high school games were often moved to the afternoon, which worked out just fine because many basketball players -- Ollie not included -- doubled as gang affiliates.

"He had friends that I know would have been involved in gang activity if it wasn't for the affiliation they had with Kevin," Tinez says.

Ollie's insatiable love for basketball kept him off the streets, as did his relationship with Dorothy.

"I always wanted to make my mother proud," Ollie says.

Yes, Kevin Ollie was a mama's boy. At least that's what Jim Calhoun thought when he stopped by for an in-home visit in 1990. Ollie had offers from nearby UCLA and Arizona, and Dorothy wanted her son to play for Lute Olson at Arizona.

Convincing her to send Kevin 3,000 miles east didn't seem likely. But UConn's presentation that afternoon was unique: Calhoun was the only coach to bring visual aid, a videotape with highlights and a fight song. Mother and son were captivated.

"It went, `What I love about UConn!' " Dorothy exclaims, briefly tapping into her powerful vocal cords before settling into a casual speaking voice. "I remember it like it was yesterday."

Calhoun remembers walking out, turning to one of his assistants -- either Dave Leitao or Howie Dickenman -- and saying, "There's something different about him."

There's plenty of evidence to support that claim now: How many other 39-year-old former NBA veterans are now leading a major Division I college basketball program? That would be zero.

"Different," though, has multiple layers, some of which don't appear on a biography. Take Jim Calhoun's favorite Ollie story: In a 1994 game against Providence, a bonehead technical foul by Donny Marshall and poor perimeter defense led to an instant five-point swing, giving the Friars a late lead. Ollie saved the day with a layup in the closing seconds, and when the Huskies arrived home, he called a team meeting at his on-campus apartment. Every player joined.

"We had Ray Allen, we had talented guys with a lot of personality on that team," Calhoun says. "But Kevin Ollie without question was the guy they followed."

Older or younger, richer or poorer, they followed him at New Birth Missionary, the reason he was appointed a group leader. They followed him at Crenshaw, where he always led the pack on runs through the hills of the prosperous Baldwin community. They followed him at UConn, where he fought for his starting job for three consecutive seasons and managed to retain it every year. They followed him not because he asked, but because he didn't. And not because he preached, but because he acted.

"Young people need role models," says Larry Brown, who coached Ollie for two seasons with the Philadelphia 76ers. "Not the guys that tell you how to act and live, but do it."

Ollie's family cites the "little things," such as his involvement in the food drive at New Birth Missionary; the way he'd help Dorothy, raising three kids on a teacher's salary, research the best deal on a washing machine; the surprise breakfasts he'd make for Vita; the charity AAU basketball tournament he hosted in Compton after his freshman year in college.

Then there's the other element, the obvious to anyone who has spent 10 minutes or, like Calhoun and Griffin, 20 years with Ollie: An undeniable positive energy permeates through every room he enters.

"You had no choice but to follow him," Jeff Calhoun says. "He has this quiet presence, and I don't mean that in the sense that he doesn't speak a lot, but there's this vibe he sends off. It's kind of hard to describe."

For Rev. E.V. Jernigan, who first witnessed it 30 years ago, there's only one explanation.

"Where he got that influence from, I can only say it came from the Lord," Jernigan says. "He's the one who calls us."

`Truly blessed'

Philippians 4:13 reads: "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

Of all the verses that Ollie has analyzed -- from his days at New Birth Missionary to the Bible study groups he organized with his NBA teams -- this one in particular speaks to him.

"Let me tell you, Kevin Ollie is blessed," Griffin says. "And I'm not even talking about playing in the NBA or being the head coach at Connecticut when I say that Kevin is truly, truly blessed."

Blessed not only from above, but by the people he's met. In Jim Calhoun, he found a man who "brought things out of me that I didn't even know I had." He met someone entirely devoted to family, a hoops legend who, in between all the speaking engagements and recruiting trips, made the time to be a good father. Calhoun calls Jeff every day -- "If my phone goes off at 8:45, I can almost guarantee it's my dad," Jeff says -- and would regularly coach a 7 p.m. tip on the road, then show up in Glastonbury the next morning for his granddaughter's swim meet.

In Dorothy, he had a mother who founded Social Concern in Action, a nonprofit organization benefiting underprivileged Los Angeles youths in performing arts and athletics.

He had a father, too, and although his parents divorced in 1977, Fletcher Ollie remained part of his life. Kevin would visit Dallas in the summer, when Fletcher, a physical education teacher, worked landscaping. They would wake up at 4 a.m. and cut grass, "trying to beat the Texas heat," as Ollie puts it.

The desire to succeed may be natural, but it was in those early mornings, that an incessant work ethic became conditioned. It would define his basketball career: In 1992, UConn brought in Junior College All-American Covington Cormier, and there were rumblings that he would take Ollie's starting job. Ollie had him within three workouts, Jeff Calhoun says, because he "would never give in."

The rest, as they say, is history: A muscular 6-foot-3 guard with a suspect jump shot, Ollie got his shot at the NBA in 1997 and stuck for 13 seasons. Vita used to call him "The Manager" because once he entered the game, things settled. Larry Brown, a Hall of Fame coach, used to take advice from his back-up point guard.

"Kevin, right from the beginning, I learned from him," Brown says. "Being around him, he was a really good coach from day one. He would talk to me about the things that would be easier on our players and would be helpful for me. And he always respected the game."

Late in Ollie's career, a road game took him to Dallas, and he met up with Tinez Jernigan afterward. Several teammates were going to the club, but Ollie opted to stay in the hotel. Tinez asked "How come?"

"They're not paying me to go to the club," Ollie told him.

When he retired in 2010, several NBA teams wanted him as an assistant coach or in the front office. It made sense: God created a leader in Kevin Ollie, and playing under four Hall of Fame coaches -- Calhoun, Brown, Chuck Daly and Don Nelson -- gave him, as Calhoun says, a "Ph.D. in basketball." He seemed built for an NBA job. But UConn had just lost two assistants and Calhoun wanted him, too. Unsure of his next step, Ollie confided in those close to him.

"You know what he talked about?" Griffin says. "He talked about walking his daughter to the bus stop and watching his son play in high school. That's what was important to him."

And so the decision was made: "I'm choosing the University of Connecticut," Ollie told Griffin, "but I'm also choosing my family."